 |
WHEN YOU LOOK IN THE MIRROR, WHAT DO YOU SEE? If you're a UK wreck-diver, your image has changed. Yesterday you were just an ordinary person with a wacky, adventurous hobby, and an abnormal interest in wind direction.
Today you are a suspected grave-robber. You stand accused of pillaging the last resting place of war heroes in search of trinkets to sell on the Internet.
How seamlessly you have slipped from being an acceptable member of society to a public enemy!
In Folk Devils and Moral Panics, Stanley Cohen described the process of being identified and labelled as a problem group in society from studies that he made in the 1960s of the battles between Mods and Rockers, and the impact of these events on popular thinking. This is how the process applies to the current wrecks debate:
STEP 1: A problem is identified (the disturbing of war graves)
STEP 2: The problem is presented in simplistic, us-and-them terms (relatives of war heroes v grave-robbers)
STEP 3: A group of people are identified, and stigmatised (it's those evil, disrespectful scuba-divers pillaging wrecks for commercial gain)
STEP 4: A media campaign is launched demanding that Parliament take action (Let Them Rest In Peace!, Western Daily Press)
STEP 5: Politicians get hold of the problem and create their own moral stand on the issue. The effectiveness of their action is not important; they are making a symbolic stand on the side of the good and against evil (Early Day Motions condemning the pillaging of war graves and proposing a ban on diving them)
PADI, BSAC and the SAA have created the Respect Our Wrecks campaign to try to tackle the worst fears of people who believe that divers are up to no good. This is a sensible, practical, responsible step to take.
However, the issues around this campaign are far wider than can be covered in a simple declaration. We're dealing with how people grieve for their family-members, the rituals around how the dead are treated, how we relate to our own history - our Britishness, and what measuring stick we use to assess our own current-day standards of behaviour.
These are complex issues. Fundamentally, they are not about respecting wrecks, but about respecting people.
The best way to understand these issues is to look at real-life situations. Three of the projects with which I am involved provide some nifty examples of the dilemmas and moral issues facing divers today.
They also explode many of the myths being expounded by non-diving journalists, lobbyists and politicians.
MYTH 1: Relatives are anti-diver
To pit the interests of divers against the interests of relatives is false. Divers are as likely to have lost members of their families during wartime as the rest of the population. The Struma and HMS Exmouth projects are both led by people who lost family-members on those particular wrecks.
On projects such as Bluebird, divers are working in co-operation with relatives. Diving a wreck can provide a focus, and a physical link between past and present which can be very valuable to many relatives.
MYTH 2: All relatives want wrecks left undisturbed
Relatives are a diverse group, with a range of different interests and views. To pretend that they all feel exactly the same is a gross over-simplification.
The wreck of the Solway Harvester was raised at the request of relatives. Dorothy Golding recently had her ashes placed on the wreck of HMS Royal Oak by divers - her husband had been killed on board.
Relatives of the Japanese fishing vessel recently sunk by a collision with a US submarine were keen to see video footage of the wreck. Some of the relatives of the men killed on the Kursk submarine wanted their bodies retrieved for burial. Relatives can also fall out and disagree about how a wreck should be treated.
MYTH 3: Photography and retrieval is disrespectful
If digging up someone's bones is disrespectful, it's being done regularly on national TV without an outcry - just watch Time Team. TV coverage of divers opening the hatches of the Kursk was broadcast internationally but without complaint.
There is no hard and fast rule, but the motivation of the person involved seems to be a key issue. If the purpose is to preserve artefacts, or investigate an accident, and the situation is handled sensitively and respectfully, people generally feel OK about it. If the motivation is personal gain, or if the actions are carried out insensitively, it's not OK.
The vast majority of wreck disturbance is carried out by commercial salvors who act for insurance companies - but nobody is running a campaign against them.
|
|
| RECOGNISING & VALUING RELATIVES |
Innes McCartney has devoted much of his time to researching and identifying submarines around the UK coast.
He was responsible for finding and diving both the M1 and the Affray, and has had plenty of experience of communicating with relatives.
"HMS Affray was the last British submarine to be lost at sea," he says. "It happened in peacetime, in the Channel in 1951, and the entire crew perished. It was a similar incident to the recent Kursk disaster.
"I have corresponded with several family members from HMS Affray. The son of one crew-member came to see my talk at the NEC Dive Show. He used to dive, so probably had a better understanding of some of the issues.
"I didn't know he was in the audience, but we had spoken on the phone a few times. The subsequent conversations we have had have been most illuminating about real issues of wreck exploration.
"I have always sent videotape of the wrecks to the relatives. I have been told on more than one occasion that arrival of the video on the doormat has been met with fear, trepidation, emotion, even panic. That is when I have realised the true cost/value of what we do.
"Some relatives have been extremely supportive, some not so. Everyone is different. That is the key issue here, and I think most people forget this.
"Survivors and relatives should always be given the opportunity to be involved in dive projects. They may not always want to be; it's up to them."
|
| WHO ARE THE ROGUES? |
The debate has shifted from labelling all divers as grave-robbers to identifying a rogue element within the diving community. Or, as the Under Secretary of State, Ministry of Defence puts it: "I ask all responsible elements of the diving community to pull together to stamp out the rogue elements" But who are these rogues?
The campaign to protect war graves began when the survivors' association for HMS Repulse and Prince of Wales found that a commercial salvage company had removed props from the wrecks. It contacted the MoD to ask it to designate the sites and protect the wrecks from further damage.
The MoD wrote back, declining to act. Rumours that it was the MoD which gave the New Zealand government permission to carry out the salvage are currently being investigated.
Divers were never the rogues in this story - we are the scapegoats. Turning on each other to root out these supposed rogue elements is simply destructive. As a group, we are no more or less disrespectful of the war dead than the rest of society.
Even Gulf War veterans feel their sacrifices are being forgotten. Many survivors' associations are angry because they feel that respect for their family members lost in the world wars has been diminished. Divers are not responsible for this, but unfortunately were the people put in the firing line.
As divers, our unique role is that we are able to visit wrecks, and to us they are a living part of history. We can make the stories behind wrecks current, and we can lend importance to the memory of the people who died on them. We are not the enemy, we're a bridge between the past and the present - and that's a big responsibility.
|
|
